


What Makes Us, Us

by faithharkness



Series: Diversions [14]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: 5+1 Things, AU-everybody lives, F/M, Mentions of Han Solo - Freeform, Mentions of Luke Skywalker, many mentions of Chewbacca, mentions of Leia Organa Solo, mentions of Nien Nunb, mentions of Snap Wesley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 11:34:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5926918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithharkness/pseuds/faithharkness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A five plus one fic for the people in the Diversions 'verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Makes Us, Us

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to koalathebear, who posted a gifset on her tumblr which helped me with one of these. And for her constant support of my writing. This fic does not exist without her.
> 
> And this is also for daylightspeaks, who _always_ comments. **Thank you.**

**I. Poe**  
Poe’s father is from a desert planet. Not as desolate as Tatooine or Jakku, but the storms were a wonder to behold. Because of this, he instilled a love of plants and a respect for the will of nature in his son.

 

No one has told Poe the impact his biting of his lip has on everyone. This is because a vote was taken (mostly unofficially and completely proctored by Pava, so take the validity as you will), and it was decided that the sense of joy that overcomes those who see it is worth the occasional dropped piece of equipment or wall-impact related walking injury.

 

Poe has vivid memories of flying with his mother, of the feel her hands holding his much smaller ones, and the warm safety of her surrounding him as they flew. But he barely remembers the sound of her voice, save for how she sounded when she sang to him. There is an old lullaby she learned from Kes, which she used to sing to Poe when she would tuck him in at night. Whenever she came home from a mission, she would wake him up so she could sing him back to sleep with it. To this day, it is the only sure-fire way to fight back against nightmare-laden nights.

 

Leia Organa officiated the marriage of Poe’s parents. She was also there for Poe’s birth and stood in as his Honored Mother on his Naming Day. She was friends with, and fought with, both Kes Dameron (on Endor) and Shara Bey (above Naboo), and she was the only person they trusted with their child. Yet because of who they all were, it was a relationship that had to remain hidden. It is a secret known only to four living people: Kes Dameron, Leia Organa, Han Solo and Poe. It is the only secret Leia ever actively kept from her brother before the Jedi massacre.

 

Poe bribed one of the masters of arms to teach him how to work with leather so he could fix and reinforce Finn’s jacket for him. In the nights where he couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to bother Jess or Rey, he would sit beside Finn’s bed, telling him stories while working the jacket into a functional piece of wearable body armor.

 

 **II. Rey**  
There is a stillness about Rey which affects the people in her life in different ways. To her, this stillness is a pool from which she draws her strength and shields her heart. For Finn, that stillness speaks to his own; a bond between two people used to having to stay quiet in order to survive, while their minds ran wild. For Jess, it is a sign of coiled danger that compliments her own methods of stealthy violence. Ben sees it as proof that stillness can be found even in the midst of his raging soul. And Poe? For Poe, her stillness is his solace. He wraps himself in it and renews his faith in himself. 

 

Rey once woke up in her quarters on the Dantooine base to find her toenails were dark blue. She spent an hour in the ‘fresher, trying to scrub it off--thinking she must have caught some terrible infection--before Poe found her and explained nail lacquer—and Jess’ love of it—to Rey. He then let Rey paint his toenails in solidarity.

 

Rey is a voracious reader. She almost wept when she saw the library housed at the rebel base on Dantooine. Leia was afraid they’d never get the young Jedi out of the library. Only the discovery of Luke Skywalker’s location was incentive enough for her to leave. 

 

When Rey looks at Luke, she is hit with a sense of familiarity and affection. The more she thinks about these emotions, the more she is not sure they belong to her; they are more like an echo of someone else’s memories.

 

Rey made Jessika choke on her caff the day after she and Poe had been intimate for the first time. Jess asked her how her skin was feeling, what with Poe’s propensity to go days without shaving. Rey merely smiled and stated she was fine; Poe’s lotion wasn’t just for his alone times anymore.

 

 **III. Finn**  
In the Resistance, Finn has found faith. The First Order works very hard to strip their troops of individuality and anything which may impede their loyalty to the First Order: friendship, religion, love. In the Resistance, he has found faith in his leaders. Through his new friends, he has been exposed to several religions, many of which help him find the solace he needs for the things he has done.

 

It takes Finn a little while to realize it, but he is a kindred spirit to Jessika. Her irreverence speaks to the child inside him that never got to just _play_. In Jessika, he has found someone who will not mock his wide-eyed wonder, even when Poe makes himself ridiculous to indulge Finn. 

 

Finn accepts the position as Leia’s bodyguard not because he fears the newly-reactivated Pathfinders would stir up bad memories of what he used to be. He accepts the position because he _knows_ anyone trying to hurt the general is not one of the good guys. He is also rather certain the First Order would not send a stormtrooper as an assassin, so he will not have to worry about having to kill someone he used to know.

 

Finn becomes great friends with Chewbacca, who very patiently taught him Shyriiwook; even though Chewie had to un-teach him some things Jess swore was proper grammar but was, mostly, insults about someone’s mother (because Jess is a terrible person). But Finn and Chewbacca bonded over protecting people who had more passion than sense. Finn is also the only one who really gives Chewie a run for his money when it comes to games of strategy.

 

Finn is the first person to help Jessika with her task of aiding in Ben Solo’s reclamation. He understands the lengths to which the First Order went through to break and program seemingly regular people, so he can only imagine what must have been done to a Force-wielder like Ben to break him. As a Force-sensitive who overcame the training, Finn’s intel is key to bringing Ben back to himself.

 

 **IV. Jessika**  
Despite Poe’s teasing to the contrary, Jess actually _can_ cook. That kitchen fire was entirely due to circumstances beyond her control—she’s looking at _you_ , Snap. In fact, one of the ways you know you’ve made it into Jessika’s good graces is that she cooks for you.

 

Jess’s Resistance file reports she speaks Basic, some binary and enough Shyriiwook to get her in trouble. In actuality, she has a natural talent for languages and is fluent in at least six languages, and can respectably fake her way through another half dozen. It is the main reason the Resistance’s intelligence corps has tried to recruit her several times.

 

Jessika does not wear hand wraps when she spars. This has led to countless lectures and admonitions, from trainers and partners, throughout her life. But the wrappings damaged her finely-filed nails, and she assured everyone that, when she gets in a fight, she is not going to have time to wrap her hands.

 

Poe may be Jessika’s best friend and Han Solo may be her mentor, but the person she seeks out when she has questions about the Resistance and the Rebellion, and what being a pilot in this mad world really _means_ , she seeks out Nien Nunb. They have been known to close down a cantina and, honestly, there’s no one she’d rather have at her back.

 

Jessika taught Rey Poe’s lullaby less than a week after meeting her.

 

 **V. Ben**  
The last physical piece of his past he destroyed to become Kylo Ren was a posed family photograph. Leia had insisted upon it because Han was actually home during one of her breaks from diplomatic duties. Ben had _hated_ sitting still for her to tame his unruly hair, but Chewbacca’s presence had been able to get an honest smile out of him for the photo.

 

The first thing Ben remembers is not his mother’s voice, but his father’s smile. The second thing he remembers is his mother’s touch. The first sound he remembers hearing is his own laughter as he climbed the Force tree with Poe Dameron as a child. All three are things he prays to every night as he tries to remember how to be Ben Solo.

 

Even though he has made remarkable progress and feels more like Ben Solo than he ever did before, Ben is still terrified of the specter of Kylo Ren. There are pieces of his memory which refuse to surface, and sometimes he is not sure if what the voice in his head says are his own doubts, or something much more sinister.

 

Ben caught a really bad cold four months into his stay with the Resistance. He didn’t say a word to anyone for a week because his voice sounded so much like Kylo Ren’s.

 

Before the massacre at the Jedi academy, Ben buried his first lightsaber (a soft yellow blade that reminded him of his mother’s love) under a loose floorboard in his uncle’s hut. He couldn’t bear to use it for what (he believed) had to be done. He has not yet worked up the courage to find out what happened to it.

 

 **VI. And One More**  
Jessika and Poe are not allowed to dance together in public, for the sake of everyone’s libido.

**Author's Note:**

> I actually do not know the status of Kes Dameron in canon at the time of/around TFA. So I'm keeping him alive because it makes me happy.
> 
> Also, I have a lot of thoughts on religions in the SWU; I'm not that well-versed in canon religions. If you're interested, my headcanon is that Jess is of a faith with a Maiden-Mother-Crone trinity, thus her different sayings.


End file.
